YudelLine

Sunday, January 7

We must work against the Saudis' campaign of religious hatred
and subversion around the world. And we must begin looking for other regional
partners, from a liberated Iraq to a future Iran. Finally, we must be prepared
to seize the Saudi oil fields and administer them for the greater good. Imagine
if, instead of funding corruption and intolerance, those oil revenues built
clinics, secular schools and sewage systems throughout the Middle East. Far
from being indispensable to our security, the Saudis are a greater menace to
it than any other state, including China.

Many would regard giving the Internet to the world as a benevolent
act fitting for one of the world's great public universities. But Bill Hoskins,
who is currently in charge of protecting the intellectual property produced
at U.C. Berkeley, thinks it must have been a mistake. "Whoever released the
code for the Internet probably didn't understand what they were doing," he says.

Berger is justified in his fears that if the ultra-Orthodox
establishmesnt does not take issue with the Christian messianism adopted by
Chabad and the cult surrounding a deified, dead man, the character of Jewish
messianism will change altogether. But that is not all. The deafening silence
on this matter is a blunt way of saying that Judaism today has no beliefs, no
principles, no spiritual values. All it is, is a rigid lifestyle sustained by
a narrow-minded educational system."

"I found it remarkably empowering to spew my hatred with the banner
of God in my hand," he says.

But challenged by his father to take up true religious scholarship,
Abou El Fadl began a journey of Islamic learning that would transform him
into a nemesis of the extremists he once endorsed. Today, at 38, he is a leading
warrior in the intellectual struggle that exploded into America's consciousness
Sept. 11: Who speaks for Islam? Who defines it?

Saturday, December 22

One of the (still) untold stories, however, is the cooperation
of U.S. and other Western companies in enforcing sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia.
McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other U.S. firms, for instance, maintain
strictly segregated eating zones in their restaurants. The men's sections are
typically lavish, comfortable and up to Western standards, whereas the women's
or families' sections are often run-down, neglected and, in the case of Starbucks,
have no seats. Worse, these firms will bar entrance to Western women who show
up without their husbands. My wife and other [U.S. government affiliated] women
were regularly forbidden entrance to the local McDonald's unless there was a
man with them..."

The question is whether Americans are as concerned today about U.S.
corporate support of gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia as the late Leon Sullivan
and a host of others in the anti-apartheid movement were disturbed by the
obedience of American businesses to racist apartheid policies in South Africa.

The Feminist Majority Foundation led the public outcry over the Taliban's
human rights abuses against women and girls in Afghanistan. What do they and
other opponents of gender discrimination think of the complicity of America's
fast-food joints in Saudi Arabia?

Yudel's Line:I can't
wait to see how Seth
Lipsky comes out on this one. Is this a chance to go after the Saudis?
Or will the "We're the Good fundamentalist" of Agudath Israel point out that
tomorrow's embargo on McDonald might become next year's sanctions against
Israel's new segregated bus lines?

Another state-controlled newspaper, Al-Watan, questioned Thursday
why the press in the United States -- with its war on terrorism, recession and
"highest level of murders and rapes" -- would focus attention on felony battery
charges filed against a Saudi princess living in Florida.

Police in Florida charged the princess Monday with hitting her Indonesian
maid's head against a wall and pushing her down a staircase.

"It cannot be explained except in the context of the continuing American
campaign against Saudi Arabia," Al-Watan said. The paper added that Saudi
residents in the United States are still being detained as part of the investigation
into the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

"We hope that Americans realize before it is too late that patience
has its limits," concluded Al-Watan's editorial.

Prince Sultan told journalists Tuesday that if Saudi Arabia were to
change its position on the Palestinian issue, "if we were to become enemies
to ourselves and befriend the Jews, the campaign would end within 24 hours."

The defense minister said he found the media criticism "surprising"
because the United States and Saudi Arabia share "important common interests."


Wednesday, December 19

Unfolding in the last two years of his presidency, long before
the events of Sept. 11, Clinton's war was marked by caution against an enemy
that the president and his advisers knew to be ruthless and bold. Reluctant
to risk lives, failure or the wrath of brittle allies in the Islamic world,
Clinton confined planning for lethal force within two significant limits. American
troops would use weapons aimed from a distance, and their enemy would be defined
as individual terrorists, not the providers of sanctuary for attacks against
the United States.

Having converted their Gulf war contacts into business contacts,
the men who guided foreign policy in Bush I (and who, it was assumed, would
help do the same in Bush II) boast unusually close relations with the Saudis.
The elder Bush, for example, decamped for the Carlyle Group, a Washington investment
firm favored by Saudi elites--including the bin Laden family, with whom Bush
Sr. has met twice. 

I don't wear hijab (my mother and grandmother never did, either)
but I do fast, pray and give to charity, thus fulfilling my obligations to the
basic pillars of Islam. I was brought up to respect all faiths and the human
rights of individuals.

In the merciless eyes of the faith police that we now have within Muslim
communities, this set of beliefs makes me a kaffir, an infidel, an enemy of
"true" Muslims. So they write to me and to each other about how I should be
punished, intimidated, even killed. Poison is thrown at my children. I have
had to become seriously attentive to security measures, and other liberal
Muslims have been similarly targeted.

The subpoena demanded that she turn over to the FBI every note she
had had about her book in progress — and all copies of the notes. In
other words, she was supposed to surrender control of the book to the FBI,
with her ability to continue writing dependent on whether the FBI ever decided
to give her the notes back. Now, she's in a federal detention center for contempt
of court because she defied the subpoena.

Sunday, December 16

In 1980, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United
States boycotted the Moscow Summer Olympics. Afghanistan has been invaded again.
The United States should seize the opportunity and boycott our own Salt Lake
Winter Olympics in February.

The Winter Games, after all, are an embarrassment to sports in general
and to the United States in particular. 

Sunday, December 9

Attorney General John Ashcroft: to those who scare peaceloving people
with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this, your tactics only aid terrorists

Yudel's Line:Correct
me if I'm wrong, but this sounds like Ashcroft is equating dissent --
for that matter, honest debate -- with treason.

I'm grateful to be an American
citizen -- because otherwise, I could be arrested under executive order, tried
by executive employees, and executed by a simple majority vote. There would
be no court to oversee this. We have only John Ashcroft's and George W. Bush's
word that these draconian powers would be only used against bonafide terrorists.

Given their views on debate and
disagreement, I would be very afraid to be a non-citizen in this country.

Further: If I were the owner of
a multinational corporation, which had officers and employees of different
citizenships, I would begin moving my operations oversees to a country that
guaranteed the rule of law to citizen and non-citizen alike. I would not jeopardize
the lives of my employees by having them visit this country under the current
circumstances.

I wonder what will happen when
the stock market begins digesting these ramifications.

It was September 19, 2001. Elizabeth McAlister had not heard
from her husband, Philip Berrigan, in more than a week. Such silence on Berrigan's
part was "most unusual," she says. Convinced that something was wrong, she telephoned
the Federal Correctional Institution in Elkton, Ohio, where the seventy-seven-year-old
peace activist is serving a sentence of a year and a day for hammering on a
military aircraft while on probation for a similar action in another state.

"It took ten phone calls to the prison to get them to admit to me that
he was in segregation," she says. McAlister also learned that Berrigan was
being denied all phone calls and visits, even from family members. "I was
not told why or for how long."

So McAlister telephoned the office of her Senator, Maryland Democrat
Barbara Mikulski. Mikulski's office called the prison and, according to McAlister,
was told "that Phil was put in segregation on September 11, 2001, as a direct
consequence of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,

In a letter to The Progressive dated October 25, Berrigan describes
his experience. "On September 11, I watched appalled as the second tower of
the WTC came down. The guards called me out, took me to the lieutenant's office,
shackled and handcuffed me, and took me to solitary. I inquired several times
as to why. One guard grunted, 'Security!' During twelve days in segregation,
no further daylight was provided. One lieutenant came to announce, 'No phone,
no visitors!' And no stamps. I was locked down ten days before mailing out
letters. The result? Limbo-incommunicado."

It was "perhaps Ashcroft's idea. Lock up all the naysayers," he says.

Monday, November 26

Here's one of the reasons I haven't had as much time to post lately. This
monthly newsletter includes my take on the Parsha for the coming months, including
a tie-in between my favorite Midrash and the events of Sept. 11.

What does it mean to wrestle with God? Why was Moses called the "man
of God"? How should we respond to tragedy?

Sunday, October 29

The remarkable thing we learned from the House economic stimulust
bill was that conservative politicians — who used to claim that they were improving
incentives by reducing marginal tax rates, and that it was just an incidental
side effect that big corporations and wealthy individuals were so richly rewarded
— no longer feel the need to disguise their payoffs. The core of the bill was
a repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax retroactive to 1986, which
means that selected companies would immediately receive huge lump sum payments
from the government, totaling around $25 billion, with no incentive effect at
all.

... But the truth must be spoken. Lately our government has not exactly
inspired confidence; its response to terrorism is starting to look a bit scatterbrained.
But on some subjects our leaders are quite clearheaded: whatever else may
be going on, they make sure that they are taking care of business.

Do economic conservatives really believe in the unadulterated
free market, or do they believe in the interests of the rich?

One such experiment occurred last month with the airline bailout, when
conservatives in Congress decided that airline workers threatened by market
forces--that is, laid off--did not require help, but airline companies threatened
by market forces did. When forced to choose between their cherished economic
doctrines and the interests of the affluent, conservatives--or at least the
ones who hold power in Washington--chose the latter.

Washington conservatives are actually driven by an overwhelming interest
in wealth distribution--even when that interest leads to gross economic mismanagement.
And, in the case of the stimulus bill, their solicitousness for the rich has
led them to oppose the utterly uncontroversial fiscal steps most likely to
forestall a recession.

This is an administration that will let its special interests
— particularly its high-rolling campaign contributors and its noisiest theocrats
of the right — have veto power over public safety, public health and economic
prudence in war, it turns out, no less than in peacetime. When anthrax struck,
the administration's first impulse was not to secure as much Cipro as speedily
as possible to protect Americans, but to protect the right of pharmaceutical
companies to profiteer. The White House's faith in tax cuts as a panacea for
all national ills has led to such absurdities as this week's House "stimulus"
package showering $254 million on Enron, the reeling Houston energy company
(now under S.E.C. investigation) that has served as a Bush campaign cash machine.

Airport security, which has been enhanced by at best cosmetic tweaks
since Sept. 11, is also held hostage by campaign cash: As Salon has reported,
ServiceMaster, a supplier of the low-wage employees who ineptly man the gates,
is another G.O.P. donor. Not that Republicans stand alone in putting fat cats
first. In a display of bipartisanship, Democrats — lobbied by Linda Hall Daschle,
the Senate majority leader's wife — joined the administration in handing the
airlines a $15 billion bailout that enforces no reduction in the salaries
of the industry's C.E.O.'s even as they lay off tens of thousands of their
employees.

Yudel's Line: Let me
be clear: I don't think that throwing billion dollar thank you notes to large
corporations provides any aid or comfort to the Taliban or their Wahhabi friends.
But handing out retroactive tax reductions to profitable corporations at a time
when millions are losing their jobs does not embody the spirit of solidarity
America needs now. Let us win this war, W; there'll be ample time for champagne
after V-Day.

Women keened over the bodies of 15 Christians lying in pools
of blood in a Pakistani church Sunday after masked gunmen on motorcycles drew
up, shot dead a police guard and sprayed the congregation with Kalashnikov fire.

As some 70 Christians gathered for regular Sunday morning services,
six men on three motorcycles rode up to Saint Dominic's Church and pulled
AK47 assault rifles out of their bags, one witness said. Shouting ``Graveyard
of Christians -- Pakistan and Afghanistan,'' and ``This is just a start,''
they raced up to the church while the guards were asleep and opened fire,
killing one.

Five worshippers were wounded, four critically, doctors said.

Four gunmen entered the church chanting ``Allah-u-Akbar'' (God is Greater)
while two waited outside to shoot anyone who tried to flee, a witness said.

Lying sprawled on the floor of the church, its walls scarred with bullet
holes, were the bodies of seven women, two children aged three and five, and
the pastor, Father Emmanual.

Saint Dominic's is a Catholic church but a Protestant service was being
held at the time of the attack. The gunmen, who fled, killed 13 in the church
and three died later in hospital.

On the wall above the bodies, a biblical inscription was painted in
red: ``We want peace, order and harmony.''

[5.32] For this reason did We prescribe to the children of Israel that
whoever slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the
land, it is as though he slew all men; and whoever keeps it alive, it is as
though he kept alive all men; and certainly Our apostles came to them with
clear arguments, but even after that many of them certainly act extravagantly
in the land.

[5.33] The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle
and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be
murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite
sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in
this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,

[5.34] Except those who repent before you have them in your power;
so know that Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

[5.51] O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for
friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them
for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the
unjust people.

Yudel's Line:I ran
across this section of the Koran while tracking down the line that whoever
slays a soul is as if he killed the world, which appeared in an ad from a
local Islamic organization. Since I was teaching the Mishna the Koran quotes,
I was interested in seeing the context.

Unfortunately, in this case the
context takes a bit away from the moral message.

The Saudi bulldozing of some of the most historically valuable
architectural monuments in the western Kosovo market town of Djakovica is merely
the latest in a series of iconoclastic activities in the Balkans undertaken
in the name of reconstruction assistance by Arab aid organizations. War-damaged
historic buildings are not repaired, but rather demolished to make way for what
the Arab donors consider to be more proper Islamic structures.

The destruction is a further blow to Kosovo's architectural heritage,
following the destruction by Serbian forces and civilians in 1998 and 1999
of over 200 mosques and other Islamic structures -- about one-third of the
total number in the province.

Yudel's Line:Which
just goes to show that if you think your mechitza is tall enough, thank you
sir, then you ought to pay for your rebuilding yourself and not start fundraising
Boro Park.

Okay, I've been suggesting the possibility of restoring the Hashemites,
who were the traditional custodians of Mecca and Medina, and the traditional
rulers of what is now Saudi Arabia. But J. Peter Mulhern makes me look like
a piker by suggesting that we bring back the whole frickin' Ottoman Empire...

Yudel's Line:Our Saudi
friends and allies are drawing heat, as we notice they fund the Taliban, stonewall
the Sept. 11 investigation, and are generally up to no good. Let's not forget
their role in sending Arafat down the mad path of Intifada II, rather than
accepting the Palestinian state Barak and Clinton offered. Who should rule
Mecca and Medina? That's a very satisfying way to frame the debate.

Of course, before we get there
we'll have to deal with the tight mesh of interests between the Saudis and
the Texans.

I've updated my Dylan anecdotes page, with three sightings of Dylan
on the High Holidays, from 1989-2001:

As a Lubavitcher myself, I must admit that blue eyed stare that I got
from Bob on that day as I showed him the place and helped him put on his tallis
was very similar to the blue esyed stare that the Rebbe used to give as I
passed him for "Dollars" and "Kois Shel Brochah."

They both have/had penetrating stares that made you feel as if they
are peering into your soul. Also, both have a shade of blue eyes that makes/made
you feel as if you could look into their soul. As if you are looking into
a clear blue pool. As if you are looking into a pure soul. He specifically
conveyed to his boyhood friend that he did not want an aliyah. Instead the
rabbi asked me to honor him with P'sicha for Avinu Malkeinu. 

A Sacramento journalist is taken into custody by police and forced to
destroy photos by an over-zealous National Guardsman. Apparently, the terrorists
are indeed causing instability.

You understand sir, this is a national security measure, and we’re
going to have to check with the FAA to clear it,” he said. “You know they
might not let you back on the airplane. You make people nervous.”

How do I make people nervous?” I asked.

By doing whatever you’re doing.”

What am I doing?”

I don’t know, but whatever it is, you’re going to stop doing it!”

OK,” I said. “But what am I doing?” I wasn’t getting it. He began poking
his index finger at me to emphasize the point.

(1) all Americans are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms,
the terrorists who planned and carried out the attacks against the United
States on September 11, 2001, and in pursuing all those responsible for those
attacks and their sponsors until they are brought to justice;

(2) Sikh-Americans form a vibrant, peaceful, and law- abiding part of America's
people;

(3) approximately 500,000 Sikhs reside in the United States and are a vital
part of the Nation;

(4) Sikh-Americans stand resolutely in support of the commitment of our Government
to bring the terrorists and those that harbor them to justice;

(5) the Sikh faith is a distinct religion with a distinct religious and ethnic
identity that has its own places of worship and a distinct holy text and religious
tenets;

(6) many Sikh-Americans, who are easily recognizable by their turbans and
beards, which are required articles of their faith, have suffered both verbal
and physical assaults as a result of misguided anger toward Arab-Americans
and Muslim-Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack;

(7) Sikh-Americans, as do all Americans, condemn acts of prejudice against
any American; and

(8) Congress is seriously concerned by the number of crimes against Sikh-Americans
and other Americans all across the Nation that have been reported in the wake
of the tragic events that unfolded on September 11, 2001.

(b) Sense of Congress.--Congress--

(1) declares that, in the quest to identify, locate, and bring to justice
the perpetrators and sponsors of the terrorist attacks on the United States
on September 11, 2001, the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans,
including Sikh-Americans, should be protected;

(2) condemns bigotry and any acts of violence or discrimination against any
Americans, including Sikh- Americans;

(3) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to work to prevent
crimes against all Americans, including Sikh-Americans; and

(4) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to prosecute
to the fullest extent of the law all those who commit crimes.

Yudel's Line:So let's
get this straight: "All Americans are united in condemning terrorism,"
but Sikhs are more united? Or are more united than others wearing turbans?
Or others wearing beards?

Or did Congress really want to
say that while they won't miss any Muslims back in their districts -- or at
least those without citizenship -- they don't want any Sikhs getting swept
up in the pogrom?

Monday, October 15

Even the 67-year-old singer says his record company should give
razor blades away with his records.

But two years ago, for no apparent reason, the veil of depression lifted.
For the first time in his life, Cohen sighed, looked out on the world and
felt at peace with it.

'There was just a certain sweetness to daily life that began asserting
itself. I remember sitting in the corner of my kitchen, which has a window
overlooking the street. I saw the sunlight that shines on the chrome fenders
of the cars, and thought, "Gee, that's pretty."

It was a remarkably late epiphany. Cohen had spent the past 50 years
ploughing his way through drugs, drink, countless women and several religions
in an attempt to find release from this 'backdrop' of self-doubt. But the
cure was more simple - he learned to ignore himself.

Global Crossing shareholders have seen their stakes become all
but worthless, unlike Gary Winnick, the company's founder and chairman, who
unloaded half his shares before the stock tanked.

Many people in upstate New York have been financially devastated by
the collapse of Global Crossing's stock from $61.375 two years ago, to 82
cents today.

That is because Global Crossing Ltd., which aimed to build a worldwide
fiber optic communications network, swallowed up the old Rochester Telephone,
and many investors and workers in the region owned shares in that reliable,
low-risk utility that were converted into shares in a high-risk start-up.

But some of Global Crossing's executives and directors have done quite
well, cashing out to varying degrees the last couple of years.

Yudel's Line:This
cuts close, but not too close -- I fortuitously sold my Frontier shortly
before Global Crossing took it over.

However, as various "fiscal
stimulus" plans get touted by the Republicans, it will be worth asking
the effect they have on Winick's brand of slash-and-burn capitalism.... and
whether that would be a good thing.

Sunday, October 14

How about we tell the Palestinians they can have Saudi Arabia
if they'll move and leave the Israelis alone? The Palestinians are hard working
and entrepreneurial, unlike the Saudis, so they might actually make something
of the opportunity afforded by all that oil. And, while their leaders are thugs,
it's unlikely they'd be any worse in the terrorism, oppression, and fundamentalism
departments. The Palestinians aren't going to get Jerusalem. Maybe they'd settle
for Mecca and Medina.

Getting spores in an envelope is not a real threat. Anthrax
spores need to be dispersed in the air with very advanced equipment to become
the dangerous form, pulmonary anthrax, that is lethal. Since whoever is doing
this is mailing the stuff, it's obvious we are dealing with amateurs who really
don't understand what they are doing. In that you can take some comfort. 

FBI investigators have officially concluded that 11 of the 19
terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on 11 September did not know they were
on a suicide mission, Whitehall intelligence sources said last night.

Yudel's Line:Good news
because it means 8 suicide bombers, not 20. Likewise with the anthrax. This
is not to say that Bin Laden might not have a plan to follow up his "Hiroshima"
with a Nagasaki. But this isn't it, folks.

Imagine this: FBI agents get an anonymous tip that a red van
with biological weapons has just dumped anthrax in the Central Park reservoir.
They'd like to search all the red vans in the area, but by law they can't. Once
a crime has occurred, an anonymous tip can't create reasonable suspicion for
an investigative search, according to the Supreme Court.

Now imagine this: You illegally download a copyrighted MP3 file, violating
your terms of service contract with America Online. Without your knowledge,
AOL proceeds to authorize the federal government to monitor every e-mail you
send and every website you visit in order to collect evidence to prosecute
you as a "computer trespasser."

Welcome to the unintended consequences of the Anti-Terrorism Act of
2001, which is being debated in Congress this week. The central insight of
the bill is sound: that law enforcement officials should have greater powers
to investigate potential acts of terrorism than when they investigate less
serious crimes. But in some respects, the bill doesn't empower the federal
government to investigate genuine emergencies nearly enough. And in others
it carelessly expands the definition of terrorism to cover low-level computer
crimes. In other words, it threatens privacy without increasing security.

Yudel's Line:This
is more than just "unintended consequences." This is the Republicans
and the FBI using our national crisis as an opportunity to push their wish
list through a compliant Congress.

Given the Bush Administration's
early success in having their lies about the tax cut shape the debate, look
for more tricky stuff to slip through under the guise of national unity.

The obituaries in the Nation Challenged section of the New York
Times used to be called "The Missing and the Dead." Now they are "Portraits
of Grief." But this isn't what they are, or at least it isn't the only thing
they are. They are the little baby books of grownups, paragraphs that remind
me of the disparate facts, figures and hanks of hair that parents place in silk-covered
journals to get a handle on the giddiness of new life, and the fear of the unknown.
It is an exercise in getting it down on paper: the first word, weight at birth,
the first smile that wasn't gas. But these entries -- produced in column inches
by a battalion of eloquent journalists -- hold the details of adults, some barely
out of youth, and they mean to diffuse the terrific sadness of new death, the
fear of forgetting:

"At home in Danbury, Conn., where he was born and raised, he was rebuilding
a Volkswagen bug and learning to play the bagpipes."

"Their favorite food, Mr. Klein said, is salmon -- the same as their
mother's."

"Mr. McGinley was known for singing at every party, which he attended
or gave, with 'Danny Boy' his most requested number."

"His wife said he had a distinct relationship with each of his children
but a single message for all: 'Stop fighting.'"

"'All his cousins wanted to be as cool as he was,' Mrs. Gazzini said."

There is too much sweetness to mention, especially in the discovery
by survivors that the people they loved were not entirely what they seemed.
They were better. "Every time someone calls, I say, 'I didn't know that,'"
said Mary Mercado, mother of Steve, a 38-year-old firefighter. Said Joyce
Boland of son Vincent, "His friends are telling me that he was funny. I didn't
know that."

These are beautifully written, vivid documents, not bland farewells.
They are not obits meant for us to scan in an attempt to feel safe or young
or immortal. Instead there is easy recognition and no fear in finding ourselves
in these stories. Perhaps the reason is more grim than we imagined. Our new
vulnerability tells us that these people -- happy, interrupted, not close
to done -- represent the vanguard of an open-ended tragedy: The only difference
between us and them is that they went first. 

Yudel's Line:As you
can see from this excerpt (there are actually 51 books in the full listing),
most of the on-line Jeswish books cataloged by the U of P are from Chabad.
Maybe it's time for its critics
to spend less time sniping and more time typing....

Friday, October 12

Yudel's Line:Do any
of my students read this site? Has it become standard operating procedure
to run a Google search on a new teacher? To reward curiosity, research, and
initiative, you can get 5 bonus points on a quiz if you're the first student
in your class to hand me a copy of this entry. Congratulations!

Sunday, October 7

As far as one can tell, the ultimate shape of the fiscal stimulus
package is still fluid. The package that eventually emerges could be genuinely
designed to help the economy, or it could be mainly a vehicle for political
opportunism. Sadly, the latter possibility has just become much more likely.


As yet, I can't specify which incident in the past three weeks
led me to abandon my old watchwords of understand, contextualise and explain.
If this piece seems more exploratory than explicatory, please know that it is
only the beginning of an honest attempt to document a series of wrenching personal
and political shifts.

Have I blurred the fine line between understanding and condoning atrocity?
I hope I haven't, but fear, sometimes, that I have. In the midst of often
bitter attacks on America and Israel, are others taking the same glib and
facile path I once took - and thereby absolving not only the terrorists, but
their state sponsors, of blame? 